Sunday, April 17, 2016

Lockheed Martin is considering additional applications of a cislunar outpost that it is designing for potential use on future NASA human spaceflight missions, including supporting commercial lunar missions.

Bill Pratt, program manager for Lockheed Martin’s Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) contract with NASA, said he believes that there could be other applications for the proposed habitat once it completed its primary mission for the space agency.

“NASA has a set of ‘Proving Ground’ objectives that they want to accomplish in order to get to Mars. That’s the primary purpose of the outpost,” he said in an April 13 interview during the 32nd Space Symposium here. “Past that, though, my personal view is that the outpost would be great support for countries or other entities that want to go to the lunar surface.”